Everybody Knows Nothing

"Nobody listens to the radio anymore." -- You, maybe.

"Everybody listens to the radio. 93... er, 91... well, something like 90% reach!" -- You and the NAB.

"Everyone is listening to podcasts." -- You, again.

"Nobody I know listens to podcasts." -- You again, you quote machine you.

"I don't understand how Nixon won. Nobody I know voted for him." -- Not The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, 1974. She never said that. (What she DID say was that she knew she was living in a "rather special world" in which only one person she knew voted for Nixon, which is a very different thing. Now you know.)

You get the idea. Everyone makes sweeping assumptions about the radio and podcasting industries based on their observations. Some of them may be true, but the truth is really, probably, somewhere between sweetness-and-light and utter doom. Which is to say, your personal experience and observations are not conclusive proof of anything. The stated fact may or may not be true, but "I don't know anybody under 50 who listens to the radio" isn't the equivalent of "extensive research shows (insert fact here)."

So, when we talk about the state of our business, let's keep the hyperbole and conjecture to a minimum and focus on what we know, with facts to back it up, to be true, namely: Radio's audience is shrinking, especially among younger audiences, but it's still extensive and hasn't entirely gone away. Podcasting has grown a lot and is reaching more people than ever, but that growth, depending on whose numbers you believe, isn't so massive that it's overtaking radio, at least not yet. Radio's revenues have shrunk and podcasting revenues continue to rise, but the latter is still far, far behind the former.

The rest is conjecture. It's like when your teenaged kids like classic rock and you go ahead and proclaim that kids today prefer classic rock to current music; Sure, YOUR kids may like The Doors or Lynyrd Skynyrd, but that means nothing on a global scale. (Besides, your kids are humoring you. They hate your music.) Or it's like your Facebook and Twitter feed, which use algorithms designed to build you a bubble and keep you inside it. Your bubble leads you to believe that everyone's thinking in a certain way when the truth may be 180 degrees from that. Smart people recognize that and avoid drawing conclusions based on "everyone I know thinks this." You're smart, so you know what to do.

Hold on, though. We observe people losing their jobs, so that must prove radio is doomed, right? Not exactly. Radio companies are cutting jobs because they are companies and that's what companies do when they're in debt and don't have an adequate business plan to pay back their investors. Or when someone ends up owning radio stations because they bought something else they really wanted and got stuck operating radio, too, and they don't precisely know how to do that. Oh, and, yes, that affects the product, and that may drive some listeners away. But we also know that there are still a lot of listeners, and that not "everyone" has stopped listening to radio and gone off to Spotify or podcasts. You may have stopped listening, and your friends may have stopped listening... okay, wait, you remember way, way back to the beginning of your career, when some wise old mentor told you to never pay too much mind to when your friends and acquaintances give you their opinions about your station? Yeah, that.

What, then, have we learned? Don't trust your anecdotal evidence. Keep a clear mind about your business. And we all should have tried to become TikTok stars and Instagram influencers, because there's money in that.

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Some news about me is coming on Monday, so check Net News at AllAccess.com for that. That's about as much of a tease as I can muster at the moment. It's been a long week.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
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